Gender wars

Two general camps exist in the transgender world: one believing in the reality of gender and comfortable with assimilating into the binary world and the other labeling the binary as a society tool of oppression and believing that gender is not real. For the latter group, assimilation is capitulation to “the system.”

Let’s look at each group in a bit more detail.

Gender as reality group

Gender is real and comes from the brain.

Gender expresses itself through an internally generated sense of feminine or masculine.

Gender and sexuality are totally separate. Gender presentation is public and sexual preference is private.

Specific gender expression is culturally framed but offers a wide range of presentation and behavior. An individual’s feminine/masculine presentation is personally determined.

Individual acceptance into the wider community is a desired endpoint.

Gender as social fiction group

Gender is a social fabrication of control.

Many in this group are gender variant or gender queer.

Gender and sexuality are combined, as the expression gender queer indicates. Both are very public.

Gender is flexible and an individual can change it whenever.

Individuals must remain in “group only spaces” alienated from the wider social structure.

Some conclusions

Gender as social fiction group

They take a radical social position. They insist that change from within the ‘system’ is not possible but that the gender system must be completely dismantled.

They sharply criticize the gender as reality group as selling out to the ‘system’ and hiding their transgender status.

Gender as reality group

They take a reformist approach tending to focus on single issues, make appeals to the mainstream and work within the system to create positive change for all transgender people.

They want to distance themselves from the gender is social fiction group, fearing the group’s radicalism makes the process of transgender acceptance more daunting.

Of the two groups, the gender as fiction group is the most vocal and, under the umbrella of LGBT groups, are better organized.

This group, through a more cohesive ideology, also has a stronger public stance of invalidating the gender is real crowd.

This is wrong and unproductive.

Those who would deny others their right of self-understanding assume that their ideology trumps the beliefs of others.

Julia Sorono in “Excluded” calls this attitude ‘gender entitlement’. A good name.

The belief that one’s ideology is absolute gives the right to force others to follow the ideology no matter if it resonates or not.

Sorono calls this ‘gender policing.’

A result of having gender entitlement and practicing gender policing is the belief by those practicing them that they are morally superior and good, while those not agreeing are morally inferior and bad.

The result is that each set of ideologues delegitimizes or erases those who disagree. They use verbal coercion to have others alter behaviors and self-understanding of others to conform to their worldviews.

Random thoughts

The two groups cannot take the same stage as their modes of operations and desired endpoints are totally different. But they can refrain from criticizing one another. Both want better acceptance of transgender people. Keep that in mind.

Assuming gender entitlement by one or the other groups is divisive and self-defeating. There is space on the planet for both to live side-by-side and focus on things that are shared and ignore the differences.

Transgender people need ‘safe space’ from all other transgender people, no matter what their belief systems are. Marginalizing one another serves no purpose.

As Sorono says at the conclusion of her book, “… grab our metaphorical sledgehammers, and begin shattering the ‘righteous activist/evil oppressor and the ‘infallible activist’/’ignorant oppressor’ binaries.